


Love in the Dairy Aisle (or, Why Batman Doesn't Do Fights)

by FabulaRasa



Category: DCU
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2013-07-02
Packaged: 2017-12-16 21:53:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/867017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulaRasa/pseuds/FabulaRasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce and Clark do a little grocery shopping together, which goes about as well as you might expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love in the Dairy Aisle (or, Why Batman Doesn't Do Fights)

"What on earth." Bruce was standing at the dairy section, staring at a six-pack of blue raspberry go-gurt pops. 

"I know, it's ridiculous, isn't it. The cherry is much better."

Bruce arched a brow at him, and Clark grinned. "Last Christmas when I was home, my cousin Mandy's little girl Norah. That was practically all she ate. She got me to try them, too. Come on, don't be a snob, they're not that bad. It's yogurt. Sort of."

Bruce was peering at the ingredients. "I think K is markedly less harmful to your body." Of course he wouldn't say _kryptonite_ , not even in an undertone that only Clark could hear, in the deserted aisle of a moribund little grocery store. It was a sad, dingy place, with peeling linoleum and flickering fluorescent lights, but it was two blocks closer to his apartment than the clean bright chain store, and there were some nights you just wanted to grab your food and go home. Plus, he liked the owners, Kaipo and Maile, and their little girl always had a smile for him if she was doing her homework behind the counter. 

"Come on, let's go. We've got enough for dinner. Oh wait, grab me a gallon of milk."

Bruce reached across and plucked a gallon of relatively fresh milk from the shelf. His eyebrow went up again. "Good Lord," he said. "Does this place mark up all its products? That's highway robbery."

Clark just looked at him. "That's the going price, for a gallon of milk."

"Is it?" Bruce said mildly. He was examining the flavored string cheese with a critical eye. Clark continued staring at him. "What?"

"Nothing," Clark said. "Let's—let's just go."

He paid in silence at the register. Bruce stood behind him, and he felt Bruce's eyes on him. He didn't turn to look at him. He carried their sack of groceries to the car, cranked the ignition in silence. He buckled his seatbelt. He flipped on NPR for the short drive to his apartment. Bruce was still watching him. 

Back at the apartment, he chopped the ingredients for a simple stir fry, intent on his business. He wasn't a gifted cook, like Bruce could be, when he felt like it. He knew simple, workmanlike recipes, with few variations, but it was enough to get him through. Bruce leaned against the counter and watched him, offering a few comments as he nursed a beer. Clark nodded, listening with half an ear as Bruce explained the recent security update at the Watchtower. 

It was decent stir fry, and Bruce made appropriately appreciative remarks as they ate it. Clark even sipped a little beer along with him, though he wouldn't feel the alcohol's effects. When they were finished with their dinner, Bruce folded his napkin carefully. "You're angry," he said.

"I'm not," Clark said.

"You're the angriest I think I've ever seen you. Why?"

Clark ran his finger along the chilled neck of his beer. "Not for any reason you're going to understand."

"I see. Well, why don't we continue sitting here while you try to silently master your rage at me, and I will sit here and wonder what the hell is happening and what I did wrong. Because that's certainly fun for me, I've been having a great time."

Clark clenched and released his fist. It was just that Bruce had used the word rage, in that uncanny way he had of striking right at the truth of something, and in that word Clark was able to recognize the flat sour taste at the back of his throat, the way his eyes could not seem to look at Bruce.

"We live in different worlds," he said, carefully. He listened to Bruce digesting that, in silence.

"I don't—" Bruce said at last, and Clark's brows rushed together.

"The price of a fucking gallon of milk, Bruce, really? You just—you're standing in my kitchen talking to me about the billions of dollars of equipment on the Watchtower, and your whole life is reckoned in, in numbers that don't even compute in my daily life, and you don't have the fucking—I don't even know the word. Interest, maybe? You don't have the interest to know what life might be like for someone for whom the price of that gallon of milk is a big fucking deal. For the single moms living paycheck to paycheck who shop at that store, who go there because they don't have reliable transportation to—" He scrubbed at his face, trying to wipe the anger off it. 

"I'm sorry. I really am. I did not mean to do this. This is not—not your fault, I recognize that."

Bruce was staring at his half-eaten stir fry. "Well, that's good then," he said slowly. "I'd hate to be made to feel like shit for something that wasn't my fault."

"Interest was the wrong word," Clark said. He was trying to slow his heartbeat, startled at the avalanche of rage that had shaken him. "Need, would be better. You don't know the price of milk because you don't _need_ to know it. I get that. But you know—you said that about mark-up, and it might interest you to know that Kaipo could do what a lot of independently-owned groceries in this neighborhood do. He could mark up everything he sells, because a lot of the people who buy there, they shop there because that's the only accessible store for them, all right? He could do that to them. It happens to the working poor all the damn time. But he doesn't. His family scrimps and goes without, because he won't do an unjust thing, even though the chain stores are squeezing him and they've got bills that—that's a story you just don't _need_ to know, and that's what I can't—" He rubbed at his forehead. His attempt to get control was failing spectacularly.

"Look, please let's forget it," he said. "Let's just forget about it."

Bruce was looking at him from behind crossed arms. "Sure," he said. "I'm sure that won't be a problem." He rose and took his dishes to the kitchen. 

"Bruce—" Clark called, but the shatter of crockery drowned out what he was going to say, and he shut his eyes as he realized Bruce had just hurled his plate into the sink. His fork was clattering in the sink with a tinny sound. _Fine, game on_ , he thought with a surge of what he recognized as joy. This at least he knew. Fighting was one thing they had never had a problem with. 

Of course, that had been before. Before that night five months ago when he had found the courage he hadn't even suspected he possessed, the courage to put his face near Bruce's and then refuse to pretend it was an accident, and the small strangled sound of pure need Bruce had made as their lips brushed, the way Bruce's arms _shook_ when they grabbed him. They had fucked on the floor of the cave, if fucked was the word you wanted to use for grinding on top of each other so hard and fast he had been afraid he wouldn't be able to get his pants pulled down before he came. Bruce's come had been smeared on his fingers, Bruce's groan had been in his ear. Bruce had gripped his head and kissed him with shaking lips, and there was come on Bruce's fingers, too, come that got in Clark's hair. 

Bruce was pulling on his jacket now, getting ready to leave. Clark grabbed his wrist. It was not a grasp Bruce could break. It was an unwritten taboo, using his strength that way, and Clark was breaking it. "Get your hand off me," Bruce growled, and "No," Clark said. But then he did, pulling his hand off, holding it up.

"I'm sorry," he said. Bruce was still. 

"Please listen. I'm sorry. It bothers me, all right? I thought it didn't bother me, but it bothers me. I don't know. . . how to make it not bother me."

Bruce's eyes were on the kitchen floor. Clark reached a hand for him, meaning to brush the side of his face, where there was a shadow of stubble, but his hand fell to Bruce's chest instead, and slid off. They were quiet. 

"I have to go," Bruce said.

"No, you don't have to. Don't go. I don't want you to."

"Oh, don't you. Some overprivileged asshole who doesn't give a shit about real people and their real lives, that's who I am, isn't it? Why the hell would you want me here? Let's just go ahead and get this over with."

Clark frowned at him in some confusion. "Get. . . what over with?"

"This. Spare me the drama. We're done here, done with whatever the hell it is we've been doing, so let's acknowledge that fact and move on." Bruce's jaw had never been harder, his voice more expressionless. 

"Oh," Clark said, and then, with enlightenment: "Oh." He nodded. "Okay, I see. Bruce. This is a fight."

"I'm aware."

"No, I really don't think you are. It's a fight, see. I will say things, and you will say things, and most likely we will yell, and things might even get broken, though I see—" he glanced at the broken plate and glass in his sink— "we've skipped ahead to that part. We are having a fight. Get used to it."

Bruce was frowning. "A fight," he said, as though he were trying the word out. "I. . . don't know anything about this." And Clark knew it was the truth. Bruce had never been in a relationship that had lasted long enough to have a fight, if any of his previous romantic attachments could even be called relationships. This was all terra incognita for Bruce, and it was so easy to forget that. Bruce's frown sharpened. "And what about a fight that doesn't have an answer?"

Clark shrugged. "That's called an issue. It doesn't go away. It just becomes this thing that you work around, that you learn to live with."

"My father," Bruce said, and Clark heard the thrum of anger in his voice. "My father didn't have to study medicine. He didn't have to be a doctor. He didn't have to spend twelve, fourteen, sixteen hour days at the hospital, working to save people's lives. But he taught me that that was what you did, when you got lucky, and when you were born into the kind of life we had."

"I wasn't saying—"

"The hell you weren't. Because I didn't know the price of a gallon of milk, all of a sudden I'm someone else, I'm some douchenozzle tossing coins from his Bentley, instead of who I am, which is someone who has built his entire _life_ around helping exactly the people who—"

"You're right."

"—who need someone looking out for them, who deserve better than what life has handed them, and yes, that includes the single mom buying milk at Kaipo's who you think I don't give a shit about, and who—" 

"I said you're _right_ , all right? You're right!"

Bruce subsided, looking at him suspiciously. "You're right," Clark sighed again. "Everything you're saying is true, I know that. It just—I just have to get beyond it, okay? Can you understand something that—look." He seized a butcher knife from the knife block beside the sink. He slammed his hand down on the counter and plunged the knife into it. The knife skidded harmlessly off. Bruce was watching him with narrow eyes. "That," he said. 

"I'm not following what you—"

"The invulnerability. Does it bother you? That I can't feel the pain you can, that no matter what I do, no matter how much. . . empathy, or whatever, I muster, I'm never going to truly understand what it feels like to you when a knife slices into your flesh? Does that bother you?"

"It. . . does," said Bruce, his eyes still narrow. 

"Well, there you go." Clark tossed the knife into the sink after the broken plate. "That's an issue. It isn't going to go away. There's nothing I can do to change who I am, even if. . . yeah, sometimes I want to. This is who I am. I know plenty of times that pisses you off."

"It does."

"Does it make you not—" Clark stumbled over the next word, because almost it slipped out, and that would have been disastrous— "care about me anymore, or want to be with me?"

"Point taken," Bruce said, arms crossed. 

"I'm sorry I didn't handle it well," Clark said. 

"All right," Bruce said warily. 

"And now you."

"And now I what?"

"And now you apologize for. . . something you feel you did wrong."

"I didn't do anything wrong."

Clark glanced at the sink. "You let your temper get away with you a bit there."

"You were angry first. My reaction was proportionate."

Clark rubbed at his forehead again. "Yeah. . . okay, see the apology is an important part of the fight."

"Why?"

"Because that is the only way to arrive at the sex, which is the traditional way to end a fight."

Bruce dropped his arms. "I am so so sorry," he said. "I don't think I have ever been sorrier in my entire life."

"For?"

"Pick something."

"For God's sake, Bruce."

"You want me to apologize for being rich? Fine. I will apologize for that. I apologize for all the money I never did a thing to earn, but which has brought me just untold amounts of happiness and joy."

"Bruce—"

"What? What do you want me to say? I've apologized for being rich. I will apologize for being an idiot who does not know how to do this. For being terrified all the time I am going to say or do something that will fuck this up, and then you will be done, and I will be sitting here with a crater blasted in the middle of me that I won't ever know how to—that I can't—that won't—and if I can't—" 

Clark had his arms around him and was nuzzling at the side of his neck. Bruce's breathing was shallow and mildly panicked. "Baby, baby," he murmured. "Not gonna happen, I'm not going anywhere—" His nuzzle became kisses, licks, small nips, just anything that put him in and next to and around Bruce's flesh, which smelled so freaking wonderful, he loved the smell of his neck, which probably made him some sort of fetishist. He inhaled deeply and laced his arms tighter around that large, firm, glorious body, the body that could take it when he got rough, the body that was redefining hunger and lust and sex for him every single day. 

"Are we at the sex part?"

Clark smiled into his neck. "Yes, we are at the sex part."

"Thank fuck." Bruce was pushing him back into the kitchen counter. Bruce was peeling off his shirt, and now he was attacking Clark's clothes, and his own. Clark reached for his arm.

"The bedroom's just a few feet away," he said, but Bruce shook his head. 

"On the floor. Now."

Clark gripped the back of Bruce's head, rough enough to make him gasp. He kissed Bruce's mouth, and bit at his lip. Bruce growled and yanked his arms down, pinning him against the counter. So it was going to be one of those nights—a tussle for dominance every step of the way. His cock was already leaking. There was a wet spot on the front of his boxers. "Normally," he panted, in between kisses. "Normally, after a fight, people—things are tender, and slow, and kind of—"

"Is that so," Bruce said into his ear. He hitched Clark's hips against his own. They were down to underwear, and he could feel Bruce's erection pushing against him. Bruce's voice was somewhere south of a growl. "You make me so fucking hard. This is all I've been able to think about, all week. Your perfect fucking body. Your perfect fucking cock."

"Where do you want it?"

"Where do you think I want it?" Bruce's hand was inside the waist of his underwear now, but he had bypassed his cock and gone straight for his balls. He knew what Clark liked, he knew what drove him insane. Once, Bruce had done nothing but lick and suck on his balls for forty minutes, and at the end it had only taken one long lick up his cock, and Clark had painted his face with come, had orgasmed so hard his body hadn't stopped shaking for ten minutes afterward. 

Bruce was reaching for the olive oil behind him. Bruce was naked now, gloriously naked, and Clark didn't think, just dropped to his knees and popped that stiff purpled cock in his mouth. He loved the taste of Bruce's cock. "Fuck, Clark," Bruce gasped, fingers digging into his shoulder, and Clark suckled harder. "Stop—stop or I'm gonna—fuck, I'm too close—"

Clark pulled off, letting him get his breath back. "Get in me," Bruce breathed, and Clark rose lightly, flipping him around so he was grabbing the stove. He palmed the olive oil and ran a slick finger up Bruce's crack. He swirled a finger at Bruce's pucker, and felt the small needy flinch.

"This what you've been thinking about?"

"God, yes. Do it. Fucking get in me."

"You're not ready."

"Don't care. Do it."

"Wait." Clark put enough of the oil on his fingers to at least get some lubrication up against his hole. He knew what Bruce wanted. He knew every time Bruce wanted it rough enough to hurt him for good, rough enough to cause damage, he got that much closer to saying yes. "Just—hang on a sec."

"I said, fucking get _in_ me, did you not understand me? Can you not fucking _listen_ when someone tells you what to—Jesus _fuck_ ," he croaked, his voice gone thready as Clark thrust viciously inside, the whole thick length of him with no preparation, and Bruce was coughing with it, actually panting, his arms shaking where they gripped the stove. Clark froze. Jesus.

"Bruce. Baby. Let me pull out. I'm gonna go slow, all right—"

"Don't move." Bruce's gasp was barely audible. Clark just held still. His traitorous cock was only getting harder, squeezed by the convulsive clench of Bruce's hole. Bruce's breathing was fast, his muscles still tremoring. Clark leaned his head against Bruce's shoulder. 

"I'm sorry," he whispered. 

"No, it's—it's good. It's okay. Just. . . slow."

"Want me to move now?" Bruce nodded in answer, a quick jerk of his head, and Clark slid just the smallest fraction out, and back in again. He was deep enough to hit the gland, but he didn't have the angle, and he was only causing Bruce pain. He was afraid to reach around to Bruce's cock, afraid to feel that he had gone soft. Maybe more afraid to feel that he hadn't. Bruce liked it like this, more often than Clark was comfortable with. 

The third time they had ever fooled around—and the first time they had managed to get all their clothes off first—Bruce had pulled Clark's head down to him and whispered, "Let go." 

"I can't," Clark had whispered back.

"But you want to."

"I don't." Clark's whisper had sounded unconvincing even to him. 

"You do. You want it. I can take it."

Afterward, they lay on the floor of the cave, listening to the drip of the stalactites. Clark had looked over at Bruce, spread boneless and naked on top of his red cloak. His face had looked completely relaxed, all harsh lines erased, his blue eyes somnolent, contented. But Bruce's body had been a bright blossom of bruise, from one end to the other. The fingerprints were visible all over him—lurid, angry tattoos on Bruce's neck, his hips, his thighs. Larger, more shapeless contusions where Bruce had been slammed into rock; swellings over his bruised ribs. Clark had stumbled up, knowing he was going to be sick. "Christ Almighty," he had said, his voice shaking. "Oh sweet Christ."

Bruce had just watched him. "I wanted you to," he said. "Sometimes I need that. It's not that easy for me to get. So thank you."

Clark had swallowed his rising tide of nausea, and tried to nod. "Okay," he said. _What the hell did you think this was about, idiot_ , he berated himself. _Bruce's emotional needs, or something?_

Bruce knew better than to ask it too often, and Clark knew better than to look too closely at the part of himself that rejoiced in it, that sweet surge of _yes fuck yes_ when Bruce would roll over and tell him to let go, just let go. 

Here in the kitchen, five months later, the rasp of Bruce's inhales and exhales the only sound in the small room, Clark knew just how much was enough to give Bruce what he needed. He knew, now, where to leave the bruises, and how much was too much. But running out the leash on his control was a dangerous game, much as Bruce loved to play it. He shut his eyes against the tight slide of Bruce's hole up and down his cock. There was next to no lube, so the motion was constricted, and with every clutch and grab of Bruce's muscles, he knew he was probably tearing him. "I'm gonna—come soon," he gasped. "Can you—are you—"

"Not yet," Bruce said through gritted teeth. He was pumping himself hard. Clark didn't think there was any hotter sight in the world than Bruce's hands on himself, one firm large hand wrapped around his length—God, the sight of Bruce jerking himself, what it did to him. It had been his go-to wank fantasy for years, what Bruce would look like touching himself, and to see it now—

"Harder," Bruce panted. "I need—"

Clark thrust forward hard enough to splay Bruce across the stove, his face an inch from a burner, his free arm struggling for a hold. Clark dug his fingers deep into those gorgeous hips, and Bruce's cry of pleasure/pain went straight to his own cock. "I can't stop," he groaned. "Fuck, Bruce, I have to—have to—"

" _Fuck_ ," moaned Bruce, and his hole clamped on Clark's cock as the muscles of his abdomen convulsed. The front of the oven was painted with thick white come. "Oh fuck," he managed, as another spurt shot out of him. 

"Bruce—you beautiful—God, I'm coming, I have to, have to—" His groan was massive and unsexy, a thick choke of sound as he coated Bruce's insides, and he knew, he knew he was being too rough, because he was pounding Bruce's prostate seconds after he had just come, which had to be agony, and Bruce was clutching at him in some probable attempt at _please stop_ but Clark was just two clicks beyond caring at that point. He spiraled down from it with shaking limbs.

"Clark," said a faint voice from somewhere very far away, and just like that he snapped back, and the voice was Bruce's, and he was being crushed, and the cock up his ass must be well and truly excruciating by now. He could feel the rhythmic trembling of all Bruce's muscles beneath him. 

"Holy shit," he breathed. "I'm so sorry, let me, I'm sorry," and he eased out as gently as he could. He saw Bruce clamp down on the small noise of pain, his head bowed to the cool stovetop. He shifted, and Bruce collapsed backward. Clark cradled him, easing them both onto the floor. Bruce curled boneless in his arms. A fierce wild love beat in Clark's chest. He couldn't bear not saying it; he couldn't bear the moment of saying it and hearing Bruce's silence. 

He ghosted fingers over Bruce's stubbled sweaty face. Bruce's eyelids fluttered. The contusions on his hip were yellowing already. He had been milliseconds away from fracturing that hip, fucking nanoseconds. 

"We need to start using condoms," he whispered. Bruce cracked an eye. 

"Something I should know?"

"I just mean, it might give me more. . . control. A little less sensory overload."

Bruce shifted and re-settled. He was letting Clark sprawl here naked on the kitchen floor, holding Bruce's head on his lap. "Mm," he said, eyes closed. "Whatever the hell we're doing here, I can promise you it isn't about control."

Clark stroked his hair. "You know, I could actually tell you what we're doing here," he said. "If you wanted to know, that is."

Bruce rolled onto his back and stared up, blinking at the ceiling. He didn't say anything for a while. Clark ran a tentative finger over the hip contusions. Anyone with a normal pain threshold would be wincing at the touch. A small muscle in Bruce's left eyebrow twitched, was the only tell. "So that was fighting," Bruce said. 

"Pretty much."

"I like it, let's go again."

Clark smiled. "Doesn't work like that. We have to wait for a natural cause to arise. You can't just manufacture a pretext."

"Really. Your mother is ugly, and she's fat."

"She's ninety pounds soaking wet, and she was Miss Kansas City second runner-up two years in a row, all of which you know, so I'm not buying."

"Mm." Bruce closed his eyes and folded his hands on his naked chest, contemplatively. Clark watched the come stain on his oven door. There might be a small smear, just the smallest bit, over in the corner near the edge, that he wouldn't clean. _And that's the day I made Batman come on my stove_ , he would tell the kiddies. "Well, I'm not worried," Bruce said serenely. "I'll think of something. I always do."

"Once," Clark said, and hesitated. It wasn't like it mattered anymore. It wasn't the sort of thing he said to Bruce. The sort of thing he said to anyone. Bruce's eyes were still closed. "Once," he said again. "My mother broke her arm. She was standing on a ladder, trying to fix one of the storm windows. She shouldn't have been doing it. There was a pretty stiff breeze, and she weighs about nothing anyway, so it was predictable, what happened." He stopped there. Bruce's eyes didn't open. 

"Left forearm," Bruce murmured. "You can see the knot. I noticed it when I met her. It was never set."

Clark stared at him in astonishment. Of course, nothing was going to escape Bruce's notice, once he decided he needed to know. It just surprised him that Bruce had felt he needed to know about his mother. "No, it wasn't," he said. "Running a family farm in the era of agribusiness, it's. . . not that easy. It might look idyllic, growing up in that sort of community, on a farm, but truth is, we were hand to mouth for a lot of years while I was growing up. There was a good five-year stretch where they didn't have medical insurance."

"Hence, the arm."

"Hence, the arm." Clark leaned against the cabinets behind him. Bruce was still stretched unmoving in his lap. "I see it, all the time, whenever I'm around her. Just a small thing, but I can't help seeing it. Being reminded. And it makes me angry."

Bruce's eyes were open now. Clark didn't say anything more. He didn't say _your mother never had a fucking day in her life she couldn't have the best of everything, and sometimes the injustice of it all makes me so angry I can't think straight_. He didn't have to, because he knew Bruce saw all of that. And at the end of the day, he got to pick up his cell and call his mother and hear her voice, and he knew Bruce would cut off his right arm and maybe more to be able to do that, so where was the justice there. There was no justice anywhere. 

He startled at the feel of Bruce's fingers on the back of his head, at the base of his neck. Just a small caress. Bruce didn't do caresses. He tolerated them, just like he tolerated Clark's ridiculous endearments. But there were his fingers, gently stroking. Clark just looked at him, and Bruce looked back. 

"You scared the hell out of me," Bruce said.

"Yeah. This will get easier."

Bruce settled his head deeper into Clark's lap, folding his hands back on top of his chest. He clearly was making himself comfortable. "Oh, I doubt that," he said.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Schemingreader for eagle-eyed lube-loving beta.


End file.
